"Phone system"

Dear Patient

Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry to hear about your experience at the surgery. We would like to invite you to speak to our practice manager to discuss your experience with us directly.

As you know we are trialling a new telephone system across 2 sites. The aim of this has been to provide patients with easier and quicker access to their GP along with the wide variety of primary care services that are available at the surgeries. The GPs are able to speak to you on the day and where an advance appointment is required, this can be booked in online as well as contacting us via our email service through WEBGP (usual response time is up to 2 working days). If you do not have access to the latter please come into reception to get your password so you can access these services.

In all, the service has been working well. We are now providing even more GP appointments than ever before through a greater number of platforms to suit all of our patients' needs (telephone, email, online, face to face). Following discussion with your doctor, reviews can be scheduled at a time and day convenient to you albeit this is usually on the day of contact.

As with all new systems, it is going to take time to fully establish itself. However we recognise that the roll out of this system has not been helped during a time when the NHS has been challenged critically with the winter crisis and the demand for GP appointments locally has surged unexpectedly by >70%

It may be helpful for you to work with the surgery around access and implementing this system through our patient participation group. Please speak to our practice manager for details as we would value your input.

Thank you